The new Citadel internship paying $4.5k a week to 20-year-old engineers

You'll have a hard time getting one of Citadel's flagship internships without some prior internship experience. However, if you're a college underclassman, Ken Griffin's hedge fund has released another kind of internship targeted exclusively at you.

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Launch, available at both Citadel and its electronic trading sister firm Citadel Securities, is a software engineering internship returning for its third year in 2025. The Launch internships are targeted at college freshmen and sophomores. Applicants are not expected to have completed internships before. 

The Launch internship roles are currently only available in Miami and New York, and only available in engineering. Citadel is looking to expand the program in the future, but has declined to comment on when this might happen. 

Getting on Citadel's Launch program is a solid route to one of its main internships; most of the previous cohort are returning as interns this year. The main internship is, itself, a route to a full-time job at the firm, with members of the initial Launch program expected to join Citadel and Citadel Securities full-time in 2025.

Launch engineers earn between $4.3k and $4.8k per week at both firms, meaning you could make up to $52.8k across the 11-week program. In terms of salary, this is pretty competitive with the flagship internships at Citadel and Citadel Securities. Launch engineers, like other interns, are also given premium corporate housing.

Don't expect achieving a place on the program to be easy; the internships are merit based, with both firms looking for candidates that can bring something new to the firm. Previous (non-Launch) Citadel interns have been Math Olympiad legends and competitive robotics engineers. For engineering roles especially, demonstrating your abilities in the open-source space can go a very long way.

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